He was never a warrior, though he was very much the soldier.

He was never a good partyman, though he was engaged in it all his life.

That air of bashfulness and timidity which you see about him in private life was turned in public life into an air of apology.

He always considered himself to need one, which fact, added to his maxims, which do not show sufficient belief in virtue, and to his practice, which was always to get out of affairs with as much impatience as he had shown to get into them, leads me to conclude that he would have done far better to know his own place, and reduce himself to passing, as he might have passed, for the most polite of courtiers and the worthiest (_le plus honnete_) man, as regards ordinary life, that ever appeared in his century." [Illustration: La Rochefoucauld and his fair Friends----629] Cardinal de Retz had more wits, more courage, and more resolution than the Duke of La Rochefoucauld; he was more ambitious and more bold; he was, like him, meddlesome, powerless, and dangerous to the state.

He thought himself capable of superseding Cardinal Mazarin, and far more worthy than he of being premier minister; but every time he found himself opposed to the able Italian he was beaten.